Wealthy Entrepreneur Focused On Impact Investing

James Lee Sorenson, whose late father was listed among Forbes' billionaires and left his fortune to charity, has focused his significant personal wealth accumulated through his own entrepreneurship on driving impact around the world, by "building a comprehensive impact ecosystem that has the appropriate tools whether that is a philanthropic grant, a social impact bond, or an equity investment to address different societal challenges and create sustainable scalable impact."

At present, Sorenson, via the Sorenson Impact Foundation, is working on three separate but closely related projects, including the Sorenson Global Impact Investment Center (commonly known as the SGII Center), pay for success financing and an impact investing fund.

Of the SGII Center, he says, "For a variety of reasons, there are limited amounts of risk capital going to support companies of social impact to bridge the gap between purely philanthropic and commercially oriented capital. The SGII Center has played a catalytic role in helping to address such issues and facilitate these program-related investments."

He's excited about pay for success financing, about which he notes, "It's really a new day dawning for nonprofits, for governments that are major funders for social services, as well as a growing number of investors that are interested in investing in something that has a positive benefit to society"

"We are currently raising a commercial impact fund that will address the capital gap social enterprises face domestically and scale promising businesses in sectors like education and financial inclusion that will have a profound impact," Sorenson explained.

"I hope that our efforts will accelerate the growth of the sector at-large and help lead to improved societal change on a global scale," Sorenson concluded.

Krista and Jim Sorenson in Nepal

Sorenson recently visited Nepal with CHOICE Humanitarian founder James Mayfield and his staff. Next month, I will be visiting Mayfield in Nepal with CHOICE.

On Wednesday, February 25, 2015 at noon Eastern, Sorenson will join me here for a live discussion about his work at advancing impact investing opportunities. Tune in here then to watch the interview live.